I used to play a lot of computer games back in the 90’s, but pretty much gave them up after that. Why? Because I’m the guy who suddenly realizes that it is 3:06am on Tuesday morning and he has a meeting at 7am.
But now I’m kinda bored and looking for something fun, a little but not too stressful and not ludicrously difficult. I played the Balder’s Gate reboot a bunch of times and I do like D&D type games, but I tried World of Warcraft very very briefly (like 45 minutes total) several years ago and I don’t want any sort of game where grinding levels is part of it. I played enough “run around pointlessly killing things and taking their stuff with no overarching structure” games in the 90’s, thank you.
I’m also not too big on massive on-line games. I’m a bit of an introvert and more interested in learning a game without getting shat on as a clumsy noob.
Any good single player D&D-style or scifi games out there for me?
Torchlight 2 is a lot of fun with plenty of good mods on the Steam workshop. It comes up for sale pretty regularly on Steam or places like the Humble Bundle store.
Wow, some good suggestions, folks. I’ll sit down Saturday with the list and pick up a couple of them.
Co-worker told me to get X-com when it came out and for some reason I didn’t. Played the original, so I should try it again. Played Shadowrun the actual game once circa 2002, so may check that out. Then definitely a hack’n’slash.
I don’t think Steam rents any games at all. I believe they rent some movies and such.
If you’re not a gamer now, I would recommend something like Torchlight 2. It’s fun, fairly light, and easy to play. There are a lot of customization decisions, but they aren’t hard to play around with.
I would not recommend Shadowrun, X-Com, or FTL. These are not bad games at all, but they aren’t really new-player friendly.
I’ve been digging the hell out of Wasteland 2. If you were a gamer in the 90s, you probably played one if the Fallout games - those were originally intended to be Wasteland games, but they couldn’t get the license. W2 is very much in their vein.
Big seconds on X-Com (skip to 2, though. My names in the credits! Also, it’s a more interesting game than the first one) and Shadowrun. The advantage to these is that they’re entirely turn-based, so you don’t have to have the reflexes of an eighteen year old to play them.
One I’ve been enjoying, very silly, low requirements, and it’s got the advantage of everything being player-paced (no pausing; just don’t do the next action) is Renowned Explorers: International Society.
It’s one of those where you can play a few games, drop it, go back weeks or months later and go on playing.
This confused me about the OP. He says he wants an entry level game, but he mentioned he played the Baldur’s Gate games recently, which are mechanics heavy, story heavy, HARD, complex games.
He’s ready for anything
So I’ll third Xcom 2, and second Wasteland 2. It’s got an good story, even if it has some pacing issues, and there’s a sequel in the making with a huge graphics face lift, which is the only other major flaw in Wasteland 2. The voice acting is great too!
If you are buying games from Steam, it has nowadays a fairly lenient refund policy where you can get a refund if you have played a game less than 2 hours. So if you are buying something recommended here and you end up hating it, just get a refund.
My recommendation would be Skyrim - if you like it it can cure your boredom for a long, long time and it’s really cheap compared to the amount of content it has.
The game that got me back into computer games after a long lull was Braid. Normally I hate platform games, but this one avoids everything I hate about them: constant deaths, twitchy controls, having to start levels over because you died, the extreme precision needed to make certain jumps, bullshit cheating boss levels, etc. This game solves all of those issues with a simple mechanic: you can reverse time at will. In fact, the manipulation of time is really at the heart of, and is the genius of, this game. I believe there is a free demo available on Steam. I highly recommend giving it a try.
Along those same lines, Portal and its sequel are near-universally acclaimed platform/puzzle/sci-fi games in which you navigate rooms and solve puzzles using, well, portals. It really is quite brilliant.
You can also find the old Baldur’s gate series on Steam. They’ve been polished up and if you liked D&D games from the 90s you can’t go wrong picking them up.
